export. Central and northern towns such as Kostroma, Vologda, and Mozhaisk,
where livestock production was more profitable than agriculture, specialized in
leather work.
Salt and iron were important products throughout this period. Requiring capital
investment and labor, salt (sol’) production tended to be developed by big players,
such as the Solovetskii monastery in the north and the Stroganov family in the Urals,
which got its start in Sol’Vychegodsk. By 1570 the Stroganovs employed 6,000
peasants in ten salt works. Salt production on a smaller scale was also done in the
Northern Dvina basin and around Astrakhan. In thefifteenth and sixteenth century
iron production was rudimentary but constituted a robust small-scale industry
around the realm—in Novgorod, Ustiuzhna Zheleznopol’skaia, Karelia, Iaroslavl’,
Tver’, Vologda, Tula-Serpukhov. Bog ore could be found readily and could be
processed with potash produced locally from timber. From it, blacksmiths crafted
plows and scythes, kettles, and weapons for use on their estate or sale in towns.
At the same time, the stateflexed its muscles to develop productive capacity for its
military needs or income, readily drawing on foreign talent. Already by 1446 Russian
masters were producing bronze cannon and artillery (as well as cannon balls,
gunpowder, and artillery carriages), used to terrifying effect. Russian artillery, for
example, forced the capitulation of Novgorod in 1478. Russia boosted its artillery
industry after Ivan III’s1472marriagetoSofiia Paleologa from Rome; with this
Italian connection, the state recruited engineers for artillery, architecture, and forti-
fications. Aristotele Fioravanti founded the“artillery yard”in 1479; Italian engineers
rebuilt the fortress walls of the Moscow Kremlin and the Novgorod Detinets in the
1480s, and, more famously, rebuilt the Kremlin cathedral ensemble from the 1480s
into the early sixteenth century. They introduced innovations in design and structure
(iron support rods, brick construction, regular proportions, decorative elements) that
transformed Russian stone and brick architecture thereafter.
The state continued to cultivate foreign contributions to its industrial and
political development; Ivan IV hired a succession of European doctors and
foreign mercenaries (from the Grand Duchy, Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian Cossacks,
German, Dutch, and Scots officers) brought expertise to Russia’s armies in the
sixteenth century. But the next century witnessed an intense push to welcome
foreign talents. After invasions by more sophisticated Swedish and Polish armies in
the near debacle of the Time of Troubles, the Romanov dynasty pursued military
and industrial reform and aggressively recruited foreign expertise. One focus was
construction: starting in the 1630s, engineers improved city fortifications, roads,
and bridges and constructed secular buildings of stone. Efforts in shipbuilding were
less successful: Dutch expertise was brought in for Volga and Caspian trade in the
1630s and 1670s, but these marinefleets failed toflourish. The most important
arena for Russia’s patronage of foreign industrial expertise and capital was in
military-related metallurgy: blast furnaces and waterwheel generators were pro-
duced, far outpacing small local iron smelting.
To mine for ore, process it into iron and steel, and produce weaponry, foreign
entrepreneurs were granted favorable terms—advance loans with decades to pay
back, tax breaks, access to serf labor, raw materials, and land. From the 1620s state
Trade, Tax, and Production 203